Thursday, March 12, 2015

"Evil Dead" and "Burn Notice" star Bruce Campbell sat down with Jonah Weiland in the CBR Speakeasy to discuss the changing face of Comic-Con and what it's like to run into female fans cosplaying as his characters.

Despite the name, many attendees have criticized Comic-Con International in San Diego in recent years for shifting its focus to movies and television instead of comic books. "Try and find a comic merchant at San Diego," said Campbell, referring to the media take over. "It's all 'Game of Thrones,' it's all TV. 'Burn Notice' was at Comic-Con. What the hell is 'Burn Notice' doing at Comic-Con? ... It should be called the Pop Culture Con now because it really has morphed from that."

According to the veteran actor, there's a very good reason for that, and not because comics are being forced out. "Comics are incredibly mainstream now," said Campbell. "Every major summer movie has some link to a comic book of some kind. Whether you go back to the Stan Lee days or Dark Horse Comics -- that's where all your stories are coming from."

With changes to the types of projects covered at shows, another major shift has been the types of attendees, specifically how women have begun changing face of conventions and how women have started showing up in numbers very similar to men. "[Women] are allowed to say now, 'I'm a female geek,'" said Campbell. You always expect guys to be nerdy for some reason but I meet tons of nerdy chicks -- who are hot, some of them -- they're dressed as Ash. A chick with a bloody ripped shirt as Ash -- I gotta tell you, that's not so bad."